


blessed the day that shines around us, blessed the sun that lights our way

by Magpied_Spider



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, F/F, Fix-It, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Infinity War spoilers, Other, bruce banner and the hulk, or at least MOSTLY infinity war compliant it takes off a little bit at the end but overall. yeah., so anyway everything is FINE, thanos - Freeform, the asgardian refugees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 14:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/pseuds/Magpied_Spider
Summary: Loki locked eyes with Valkyrie. “This ship is going to be blown to pieces. Close the air locks, get everyone the pods. I’ve weaved it so that when the time comes, you will appear as corpses and rubble, rather than whole bodies.” He hesitated. “Don’t go to Earth. Wait until the ship is gone, then go to the Toraji system. I can’t promise safety, but it’s nearby and better than nowhere.”Valkyrie gets Asgard out. There's only so far they can go.





	blessed the day that shines around us, blessed the sun that lights our way

**Author's Note:**

> so who saw the first scene and went "where's valkyrie?" and then decided that she was Absolutely Fine And Is Safe With The At Least Fifty Percent Of Asgard That Is Not Dead? same hat!!

The Ark was quiet, had been quiet since Thor had been crowned.

The course had been set for Earth, not that it made much of a difference to Valkyrie. Heimdall had taken the booze, hidden it somewhere and seemed to be trying to ration her off it. Something about setting an example.

Well, fuck him. It hadn’t killed her yet, and, she would argue, had kept her alive this long, she wasn’t going to stop now; she’d set up a still in one of the utility closets that was mostly filled with various sakaarian junk. She had _priorities_.

The hooch tasted awful and was probably more poison than alcohol, but the alcohol content was enough that it didn’t really matter, despite it usually sending shakes through her every time she took a swig, her body screaming _don't drink that!_ She'd never had a problem ignoring what was best addressed. Contemplating the glass, she shuddered, and it took her a moment to realise the ship was shaking along with her.

That couldn't be good.

Hooch undrunk, she grabbed her swords, weaved her way through the people coming out to gather in the hall. Thor was with Loki and Heimdall, a worried expression growing on his face.

“---he can’t,” Thor said, as she drew nearer, “we’re not warriors, we’re refugees. There’s laws — galactic laws, laws of common decency.”

“I know only what I see,” Heimdall replied. “Those inside are readying weapons, not words.”

Hulk grunted, tensing his hands into fists and back out again, restless and sensing a fight.

“Wait a bit, big guy,” she said, patting him on the arm. The fight would come soon enough.

Thor turned his whole face to look at her, surprised by her sudden appearance — she’d come in on his blind side, he was still adjusting.

“This is, his name is Thanos,” Loki said, and it was his stutter that made Valkyrie begin to suspect the pit in her stomach was looming doom rather than just an empty belly. “He’s on a mission to wipe out half the universe.”

“You know him?” Valkyrie could see it on his usually-inscrutable face, but it was nice to hear the words.

“We’ve—“ he gave a short, almost hysterical laugh “—we’ve met. He sent me to Earth, a few years back. You need—“ the ship gave a rock, and in the moment it took for the artificial gravity to compensate, half the people on the ship lost their footing. Loki’s eyes were wide. “ _We_ need to get the people off this ship. He won’t show mercy.”

Thor nodded. “I’ll open the communications, distract him.”

“I’ll help.” Loki’s voice was grim. “I escaped him once, as soon as he knows I’m here he’ll try and take me again.”

Sounded like a fight, for sure.

“Revengers reunion tour?” Valkyrie asked, holding up her sword in question.

Thor shook his head. “We need someone to get the people out, someone who can fly and lead and fight if necessary. That’s you. You need to protect Asgard.”

Loki’s eyes were almost glowing as he weaved a spell, nearly invisible in front of her eyes, then disappearing as it blew wide. He let out a breath, staggering. Thor caught him with one hand.

“Brother, what did—“

“Took more out of me than I expected,” he said, “but it’s better than one that would require less effort but constant concentration.” He locked eyes with Valkyrie. “This ship is going to be blown to pieces. Close the air locks, get everyone the pods. I’ve weaved it so that when the time comes, you will appear as corpses and rubble, rather than whole bodies.” He hesitated. “Don’t go to Earth. Wait until the ship is gone, then go to the Toraji system. I can’t promise safety, but it’s nearby and better than nowhere.”

Heimdall addressed the crowd, telling them the plan, telling them to go to the pods.

“If he comes for us, we will fight!” one woman called. In Asgard’s heyday, the comment would have been met with cheers. Here, there were murmurs of assent from some, but it was not a rumble of a people ready to fight for their lives. Not when there was another way out.

“If you fight, you will die,” Loki said, blunt. No time for a silver tongue here. “But by all means, go ahead. It would provide a suitable distraction for the rest to get off safely.”

They could hash that out amongst themselves; Valkyrie started corralling the crowd, handing weapons to those that shook their heads, to those moved to stand with their king rather than go to the pods.

She swallowed, looked up at Thor, and nodded.

Gudrun had once said, when she was asked whether or not a plan to use herself as bait for a dragon would work, “either it works, or it’s not my problem anymore.” The same scenario, echoed into infinity. She could only do what she could do.

Valkyrie stood alongside Korg, Miek balanced carefully on his shoulder. Korg had organised people to this level before, and seemed content to do so again. They checked the pod doors, checked capacity, and closed them, warning those inside not to eject until the signal. They’d only blend into the rubble around them if there was rubble to blend in to. Korg in the other main pod, Valkyrie in the other; they made sure there was at least one person they could trust to keep their head in each of the smaller ones.

Everyone aboard was silent, a holdover from Hela’s brief reign. Those who had survived were the ones that had not been found.

The sound of footsteps outside. It took all of her will not to break away, blast them or zap them or hack them to pieces.

She couldn’t.

Asgard was its people, and aeons ago she had sworn to protect them. Her priority was the people, not the king.

Even after everything, the end of the Valkyrie, after Gudrun saving her and dying in her arms, she’d never gotten rid of the mark on her arm that was the symbol of that oath. She’d considered it, thought of burning it off or tattooing over it until it was unrecognisable just as Scrapper One-Four-Two had made _Brunnhilde_ unrecognisable, but had never gone through with it.

And then, millenia, literal millenia later, Thor had seen that mark, called her _Valkyrie_ , and she’d tried to stamp it and all it stood for down again, but when Loki had made her memories resurface, they’d brought everything back with them.

She wasn’t _of_ the Valkyrie, she _was_ the Valkyrie. The only one left, the only one who still remembered the oath.

Asgard was its people, and sometimes hiding was the only way to protect them.

They got away.

Loki’s spell worked, or Thanos found what he had come for and didn’t care enough to chase, or they were lucky, but they got away, every Asgardian that had chosen to flee, not fight, and they watched the remains of the Ark blow to pieces.

Valkyrie reached for the comms, pinged the pods one by one. Gave them where they were flying to together, led the group as they pulled out of the system.

By the navigator, the Toraji system was maybe 35 hours out if they kept up their speed. Not unreachable, even with the little food and water they had.

No Thor to lead them, no Heimdall to see the path ahead. No Loki to plot and scheme and poke holes into plans until they were forced to come up with one better.

Valkyrie wondered at Loki’s swiftness at choosing a bolt-hole. Had he been planning on skipping out? He’d made noises about not being wanted on Earth, but it was always hard to tell what was exaggeration.

Looking back at the wreckage of the ship, at the terror in his voice, she wondered if none of it had been.

She needed a drink. She needed a drink, but there wasn’t even food on the pods beyond about three ration packs, much less booze.

In absence of something to sand back the sharp edges starting to pierce through her skin, the memories she still tried not to dwell on, she set to work.

She set up the comms, set it to cycle through all the broadcast channels as she recorded a message. “This is the captain of the lead ship of a group of escape pods called the Asgardian Ark,” the message began. Captain was probably generous, but Thor has left her in charge, and no way was she going to try a title like _princess_. They weren’t in the Ark anymore, but it was a good name, and better than anything else she could come up with at short notice. “We are refugees fleeing a destroyed planet. Under section three dash niner of the eighteenth Shadow Proclamation, we are permitted food, water, and safe resting grounds. Please make contact on reviewing this message.”

Of course, there was no guarantee the Toraji residents were signatories to the Shadow Proclamation, but it was better than just hoping they would give them aid out of the goodness of their hearts.

Last time that had actually worked, it had been with Gudrun, they’d fought back a mountain giant from terrorising a city and been hailed as heroes and--

Her brain pounded behind her eyes. Fuck, she needed a drink.

She’d advised the occupants to try and sleep, conserve energy, but that only worked for so long, especially when she couldn’t take the advice herself.

The children were restless, some of them jiggling their legs where they sat, others literally bouncing off the walls, and all of them growing louder. Loki would have been able to conjure up something for them to do, or at least a spell to make the noise bearable; Thor would have invented a game. Hulk would have likely as not joined in, letting the children dangle off his arms and shriek madly until they tired themselves out.

Valkyrie couldn’t do any of those things. But she did have stories.

“Hey!” she called, “Kids! Come sit down here, I’m going to tell a story.” One by one, then in a rush, they went to see what she was going to say. “This is a story about a dragon,” she began. “And it’s true.”

She tried to moderate her language somewhat, the occasional _shit_ or _fuck_ slipping through to giggles. No one ever pretended she was a good example. She didn’t weave a tale as much as she sketched it, outlining and filling in where questions were asked.

She told them of the dragon, which had taken the wealth of a planet and terrorised its people, and of the Valkyrie, who had heard tell of it, and came to defeat him.

One asked, “The Valkyries were real?”

Yes. They were. She used the past tense, didn’t notice until it almost stuck in her throat. On with the story.

The dragon’s belly was caked in its treasure, an armour that repelled the blades of a sword better than any armour, armour that turned swords and arrows away just as its scales turned them away from the rest of its hide.

How, then, could the dragon be defeated? She put the question to the audience, figuring it would eat into the time.

“Use a blaster,” one suggested, to general agreement.

“Ah, but this was before blasters were common,” she said. Was this how her parents had felt, when they’d talked about having to carry water into the house, uphill both ways? “The warriors knew that they would have to trick the dragon.”

One of the warriors — and she almost got up and left, when she realised who the main character of this tale was, almost kicked herself for not realising it before— Gudrun, had long blonde hair that shone like gold.

Fuck, she hadn’t even spoken her name aloud since she’d died.

“Was she beautiful?” one child asked.

The last of the Valkyrie nodded. “To some, she was the most beautiful of all the Valkyrie.” _To me,_ she didn’t say. “She was brave and strong and—“ _and died with the rest of them, massacred for nothing and left me alone_ “—and came up with a plan.”

The dragon was building a nest, and needed a lining for it. And everyone knows, or knew, back in times when dragons were common, that there is nothing a dragon likes better to line its nest than hair. Gudrun lured the dragon from its cave with her hair, and each time it grabbed for her and she dodged away, a little of the treasure came loose from its belly, until finally there was space enough to make an attack.

It was at that moment, so long ago, with Gudrun’s hair cut in uneven swipes from dragonclaws and her armour dripping with blood, that a valkyrie named Brunnhilde had thought, _oh._

She didn’t tell the kids that. Didn’t tell them about the months, the years of excruciating agony that had followed, as Brunnhilde had committed progressively more ridiculous feats in attempts to get Gudrun’s attention, until one moment between them sparring had ended with Brunnhilde pinning her to the wall and Gudrun's eyes flicking to her lips and a redness in her cheeks that was just a touch off the usual blush of exertion and the universes inside each of them had collided.

Kids made “ew” sounds when there was so much as a kiss in a story.

There were some things she could keep for herself.

She got up, letting the children ruminate on the story. Some of them were already acting out scenes, some of the older among them debating whether the dragon was supposed to be a metaphor.

Valkyrie raised her eyebrow at that. It was a real dragon. It had claws, and blood.

A chirp from the transmitter. Incoming call.

“ _Asgardian Ark, this is Toraji four beta command. We are tracking your ships and are able to receive you. What is the nature of the assistance you require?_ ”

“Food, water, shelter,” she said. Highest priorities were the things needed to survive. “Anything else can come later.”

“ _Right you are,_ ” came the reply. “ _We’re the only settlement on the moon — in the system, actually. You can’t miss us_.”

Four beta. Fourth planet from the star, second largest moon. There was a bright spot on the dark side, the only sign of habitation. Valkyrie messages the other pods, told them where they were headed, and to maintain the formation.

“We’re sticking together and we’re getting through this,” she said with a certainty she did not feel.

It was almost comically easy, to park the ships.

The inhabitants that greeted them were quadrupeds, brown and green fur showing on the parts not covered by clothes. Their faces were flat, like an Asgardian, but their eyelids blinked sideways and their hands had thumbs on both sides.

Valkyrie greeted the leader. Xir name was Ptolomeer, and xe led them to what was clearly a hastily-assembled shelter in a building that was not originally designed with housing in mind. Still, it had food, and water, and beds, and toilets in a separate but nearby area.

Xe did not want to discuss thanks or payment, and Valkyrie was inclined to let the issue rest, at least for the moment.

By morning, it was clear that Thor and the remaining Revengers would not be joining them — last of the Valkyrie, now the sole Revenger, perhaps she should pick it up as a surname — and Ptolomeer gave her a crash course on history of the planet.

The Toraji system had once been a popular destination, not so much for its inherent virtues but just by dint of its location. It was a convenient place to stop and refuel, or for long haulers to get some natural gravity and shrink their spines a bit.

As space travel technology advanced, their visitor numbers shrank, and their numbers reduced until their species only needed the one base on the moon to support them.

They were self sufficient, but on the decline.

A good place to slip under the gaze of Thanos. Loki has made a good choice.

“We do get alien visitors still,” Ptolomeer had assured her, when she’d expressed concern that she and her fellows would stick out as she wandered the city. As well as finding somewhere that dispensed ethanol by the decimetre, Valkyrie needed to look at ships, price them and work out how long they would need to stay here to be able to afford a ship off, trying to judge how far the pride of the Asgardians would bend before they demanded to make their own way. Priorities.

[The sound of a familiar tune](https://youtu.be/EiEodE8dmJk?t=21) had her whirling around - a whistling melody she’d heard a thousand times before. Seated at a table opposite a dark-haired Asgardian-shaped woman, laughing, was the Grandmaster.

Not as she’d last seen him on Sakaar, the blue stripe on his chin had migrated to line his cheekbones, and his robe had been replaced with what looked like the blazer that Bruce-who-was-secretly-the-Hulk had worn as his terrible disguise, but in gold, but it was clearly him.

He waved at her, still engaged in the conversation with the woman who had her back to Valkyrie, and as she approached she heard the tail end of “--nd you said they’d be here, didn’t you?”

“I _did_ ,” said the woman, and as she turned her head, Valkyrie almost dropped her jaw, because she looked _worryingly_ similar to Loki.

Who she’d left on the Ark, with Thor, in the shattered wreckage.

“Good to see my spell worked,” she said. “Gr— you two know each other,” she —  _he? —_  said, then smiled a slightly-too-sharp grin at Valkyrie. “Surprise. I’m not dead either.”

“Yeah,” Valkyrie said. “You wanna explain that, or…?”

Loki shrugged. “There was no way out of that situation intact, so I divorced my soul from my body and sent it through one of the Hidden Ways to here. This,” a gesture to the body, “originally belonged to a Skrit Na which had acquired a rather nasty parasitic brain worm that consumes the memories and energy of the body before moving on to feast everyone in the vicinity. I arrived soon enough to stop it from spreading elsewhere, but too late to save the Na. Fortunately, the body was still functional, so it gave me something to pilot. Met up with the Grandmaster—”

He waved his open hands. Thor had done a similar gesture once, called them “jazz hands”, though when pressed, had no idea as to the origin of the term.

“—who was kind enough to hook me back into my regular arcane abilities. Transformed the body into something a bit more comfortable, and here we are.”

Loki, at present, looked nothing like a Na. Skrit Na were weird, and loved collecting things — she’d run into a few on Sakaar, blasted plenty for trying to get in between her and a decent prize.

“So, you’re all magicked up again?” Valkyrie clarified.

Loki gave a shrug of a yes.

“And a… girl?”

“Sometimes.” She winked. “That’s not new, you can ask Thor to tell you about the antics he and his sister got up to in their childhood,” she said. Valkyrie blinked, and the Loki she was familiar with was abruptly in front of her. A second blink, and the newer one returned.

Alright, then. She wondered, briefly, if these antics involved shapeshifting and then subsequent stabbings. “So Thor’s alive?”

Loki let out a long breath. “He _was_ last I saw him. Looking badly off, but to be fair, he is very hardy.”

“Yeah, uh, Loki here was just telling me about, uh, this, this Thanos guy? Seems bogus,” the Grandmaster said. “This whole Infinity Stones thing, I mean. Pfft.” He gave a flap of his hand, then held it up in the shape of a glass as a martini with two olives appeared in his hand.

“Bogus or not, we’re going to have an Althing tonight, talk over our options. You’re welcome to come, or… not, if you were planning on taking off here.”

Loki’s head shook. “I’ve been trying to convince _him_ to take us to Earth, deal with the whole situation.”

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow, unsurprised at the Grandmaster’s hesitation to get involved. Sure, he’d ruled Sakaar, but she’d never seen anything that would suggest he was anything much of a fighter. A politician, sure, he was charming enough, and paid well, and had no qualms about using flattery to get someone onside, and he had a whole heap of weird inventions (fire-shoes, melt-sticks, vaporizing sprays, obedience discs, and those were just the ones she’d seen up close) but a warrior? Much less a warrior who could go toe-to-toe with Thanos?

“I just, I dunno, I feel kinda weird about it,” the Grandmaster said. “It’s… it’s like, ugh, it’s like getting in between a couple of babies slapfighting, and they’re not even your babies, and, it, it just feels weird.”

Ok, so the Grandmaster was hesitant in the _opposite_ direction. Right.

“Loki’s been trying to convince me,” the Grandmaster said, “But I dunno. Silver tongue is as silver as ever, though.” He gave an eyebrow waggle, and that flickery quick-blinking she’d learned was his attempt to wink.

Loki rocked back on her chair and poked him in the thigh with her foot. “Not in company. Although…” she looked up at Valkyrie again, the invitation clear on her face.

And, sure, Loki’s expression right now was making the offer very tempting, but _priorities_. Gods above.

“Can we deal with your… whatever this is, later?”

Valkyrie had been taking suggestions from her fellows on an informal basis since they’d left the Ark, but the Althing was going to formalise and streamline the process somewhat. She’d speak, others would speak, and they’d be able to come to a decision based on consensus.

She stood at the front, on a platform that was raised not so much to denote authority as it was so that those at the back could see more easily. Ptolomeer was beside her,  Loki was off to the side of the stage, preferring to observe, at least for now. She would present her options to the crowd if it came down to it, but she was more focused on swaying the Grandmaster towards intervening on Earth.

Good luck to her, Valkyrie thought. She’d never once seen him change his mind.

They had options, she told the crowd. They would not be staying on Toraji, despite — she nodded to Ptolomeer, who inclined xir head — their hosts’ hospitality. This was not a land for Asgardians, nor was it anything close to a permanent solution.

Their options, as she saw it, and she invited alternatives if they existed, were to either find a planet with no indigenous sentient species that was otherwise similar to Asgard, or find a planet with space to take them, with a large population cushion and space to take up. Thor had been taking action towards the latter, heading to Earth, but that planet was in a crisis right now and they’d best steer clear of it.

They could not stay spacefarers forever.

She did not get to say that they had time to think on it, for they needed a ship to replace the ark, nor did she begin to invite other speakers, who she knew had opinions and arguments for and against each option she had offered, she did not even get to introduce Loki, who had — she had told Valkyrie, about twelve seconds before she stood to face Asgard — apparently already procured another ship, because no sooner had she said, “we can’t keep our population on a cargo ship for the rest of—“ there was a cry of horror from the crowd.

Turning, she saw Ptolomeer, xir eyes blinking wide, mouth open in horror, as the side of xir face began to resemble not a face at all, but dust.

Xe gave a cry, but before words could form, xir mouth was gone, and the rest of xem collapsed into ash.

And as she looked to the crowd, it was happening before her eyes, her people, _her people_ , dissolving in front of her.

Hands clutched for the disappearing, children screamed as their parents vanished around them.

She turned, and Loki had her hand held up, crumbling away before her eyes.

“No,” she heard her whisper, and, at the same time, heard the Grandmaster say, “Oh, that’s just, _ugh._ No thanks.”

And he waved a hand, and Loki’s hand was back in place, and the crowd in front of her was whole, and Ptolomeer was _there_ , holding a hand out to the podium, trying to regain xir balance.

There was probably protocol against leaders leaving the podium at a moment of crisis, but fuck, _priorities_. She called out, “Give us a moment,” and jumped off the podium down to where Loki and the Grandmaster were.

That had been Thanos, it must have been. A mission to wipe out half the universe. From her spot on the podium she could see the pattern to it. Half the population. No discrimination between adults and children, those with family about them and those who had only just escaped with their own lives.

And the Grandmaster had undone it with a flick of his hand and a _no thanks_.

“What you were saying,” Loki panted as the Grandmaster’s hands moved over her shoulders, her face, checking for wholeness, “about the babies slapping each other?”

“Slapfighting, yeah,” the Grandmaster said.

“I think, in this scenario, the baby’s got ahold of a blaster and has murdered most of the rest of the day care, and you should probably grab that off it before it shoots out a retaining wall and the building collapses on you.”

“I _do_ , I do, I see your point, and, much more important, he just tried to do a murder on you, so.” The Grandmaster made a quick cutthroat gesture. “Yeah, that Thanos guy is going to be toast when I’m through with him, I’ll just, I’ll cut him into little pieces, and then dip him in my eggs. Soft-boiled eggs, best. There’s a place just down here that does them perfect, I think they source the chickens from Xandar—”

Valkyrie cleared her throat.

“Oh, uh, sure, I’ll get right on it. You wanna come, too? Say hi to Sparkles?”

“Uh,” Valkyrie said, and they landed on Earth in the _worst method of travel ever invented_.

Valkyrie was immediately sick on the ground next to her, bile from her stomach dripping through her teeth as she heaved.

Loki didn't throw up, but she did stagger and grab onto the Grandmaster's shoulder for a moment. ”I never quite got used to that."

The Grandmaster paused, sniffed the air, and began to walk in a direction that didn’t seem to have any visible significance. “Why can’t he just do the zappy thing to reset the universe from where we were?” Valkyrie asked Loki. “I mean, surely he’s powerful enough.”

Loki hummed. “I’d ask him.”

“He’s probably got enough on his plate, I’m asking you.”

“Well. If I had to take a stab, I’d say that he could reverse what was happening to us as it happened, because he was there and knew us. On the other hand, this happened on a universal scale, and while it’s possible to rewrite it from basics, if you’ve got an undo key then it’s easier to just press that than worry about commas and things like that.”

“Pre-etty much,” the Grandmaster said, daintily pulling his pant legs up as they stepped over some mud. “Plus, if we, you know, extend the baby metaphor, I might as well take the blaster out of its hands before I pick it up and shake it a bit.”

A group of warriors, Asgardian-shaped with the exception of one, were standing around a huge figure. Purple skin, a wrinkled chin, he seemed to be toying with the weapons fired at him.

Thanos.

“This is our guy, right?” the Grandmaster said, and in unison, all heads turned towards him.

Thor, of course, recognised him, and sent a questioning look to Valkyrie. _Where’d you find him?_ He seemed to say, even as his eye -- where the eyepatch had been, that was a recent addition -- rolled in his head for a moment before snapping back into focus. _I’ll explain later,_ Valkyrie mouthed.

“No one else would be that ugly on Earth,” the Grandmaster continued, stepping some ash that must have once been people. “They tend to be a neighbourhood of good, uh, good-looking individuals. Have you encountered their cephalopods? Marvellous.”

One of the men — a blond, with a beard —had tear streaks in his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m the Grandmaster,” the Grandmaster said, extending his hands. “How do you do, I’m here to unfuck stuff.” He considered. “That’s a lie, I’d never _un_ fuck anything, but I’m doing, the, the,” he gestured with his hands at Thanos. “You did a real bad job with that, pal. You’re way beyond melting offences.”

“And what would you do to me, Elder?” Thanos said, a measured voice coming from his lips. “I hold the power of Infinity in my hand. Your brother was no match for me, nor will you be.” He waved a hand.

Nothing happened.

Thanos blinked, frowned, then snapped his fingers.

“Infinity, huh.” The Grandmaster’s face hardened, and, for a moment, Valkyrie could see traces of an entity that had lived as long as the universe, who took power from its very entropy and would not bow to anyone or anything. _“Cute.”_

And Thanos was gone, not even dissolved into ash like the Asgardians almost had, no, he was _gone_.

Only the gauntlet on the ground remained, the stones within it glowing.

The Grandmaster’s demeanour had, in the blink of an eye, returned to the almost childish glee he used to exude on Sakaar, snatching it off the ground. “Ooh, that’s shiny, though. Look at that craftsmanship. Loki, take a look.” He held it out, ignoring the whispers that immediately began to travel through the group at Loki’s name.

Loki put her hands up. “I’m— I’m alright, thanks.”

The Grandmaster shrugged. “Suit yourself. Now, let me just have a look at—” He fiddled with the stones for a moment, rotating them around in their spaces.

Briefly, the green of the leaves turned a bright pink, the sky a horrid yellow, and a strange tone filled the air as reality warped around them.

“Gotcha!”

In the spaces that had left amongst them, a group of warriors fell out of the aether and onto the ground. “Hope you don’t mind,” the Grandmaster said, as some of them got to their feet. “A few of those weren’t technically in the universe-altering one, but I figured since they were your brother’s friends—” he addressed Loki “—you’d want them to be de-nonsense-ed-ed.”

He dissolved the gauntlet, and one by one, the stones winked out until there was nothing left.

A child’s voice came out of a suit with the sigil of a spider. “Mister Stark? What just happened?”

Behind them, two soldiers embraced; beyond that, a King spoke with his generals.

Valkyrie didn’t know the names, but she could see royalty in his stance. Thor hadn’t had it when they first met, he almost stood with it now — or ran with it, as the case was.

“Sister!” Thor threw a hug around Loki, who endured the embrace with good grace, and even reciprocated for a few moments.

They pulled apart, but Loki maintained her grip on her brother, looking into his face, which had two eyes that seemed-- whole, though one eyelid was shut.

“New one?” Valkyrie asked, pointing at her own eye in question.

“Yes. It’s glitching something fierce, I think I prefer the hole. At least I can count on no depth perception, lagging and freezing and occasionally flipping upside down is less than ideal.”

“Complaints,” said a voice from knee-height, and Valkyrie found it was coming from an upright furred creature. It looked not unlike a ra’but, but with a striped tail and sharper teeth. “I provide eyes, I provide ears, I give life and limb for you people, and all I get are complaints.”

“Did you fix my vid-game?” asked a sentient tree, addressing the Grandmaster directly.

“Your what?” The Grandmaster replied. “Your, no, why would I-- I just saved the universe, I didn’t get you a, what’s it called? Game thing?” He waved a hand, a tablet fell out of the air. “Have this, I guess.”

Another Asgardian-looking man - blonde, like a bad copy of Thor - made a face. “How is it that everyone speaks _fuck a fishnugget_ except me?”

“It was an elective,” Thor lied.

“Wasn’t an elective when I was there,” Valkyrie contradicted, satisfied to see that the fine art of  _fucking with aliens via Allspeak_ hadn’t died out, “everyone had to learn _Groot_. Part and parcel. Oh, wait, that was Valkyries.”

“Yes, did he tell you? He wanted to be a Valkyrie so much when he was younger,” Loki said. “Sweet, really. He’d learned Grootish _and_ Ketran before he realised that he missed the major component for joining.”

“I was so jealous of you,” Thor continued, more for the benefit of his Earth friends than for her -- both of them knew she’d heard this one before, although looking at Loki now, their lines about the possibility of part-time membership of the Valkyrie made a whole lot more sense.

In the background, a man with a dark beard was complaining, _who the hell is this guy, do we trust him? Who’re the chicks with him, wait, is that_ Loki?

And, next to him, Bruce walked out of a suit of armour that looked like the Hulk. “Val!” He called. “You missed it! I can’t believe you missed the whole fight!”

“You know her?” Asked beard-with-a-suit, as she jogged up to him.

“Tony, Valkyrie, Val, Tony,” Bruce said, somewhat distantly. “How’ve you been, what happened?”

“Were you fighting in that suit?” Valkyrie asked, at the same time. “What about Hulk?”

“Dude’s a no-show,” Tony said, trying to butt in.

“I can try and get him on the line for you, hold up,” Bruce said, and twitched green on the side of his face. The Hulk’s eyes saw her, and the green spread throughout Bruce’s body, until he grew out of what he was wearing and into the shorts she was more familiar with.

“Hey, big guy!” She grabbed his forearm, swung herself up to his shoulder, pressing her knuckles to his hair and wiggling them in parody of a headlock. Hulk laughed.

“Wait, _you two_ know each other?” Tony said, apparently still stuck on that.

Valkyrie ignored him. “So, what happened?”

“Uh, I dunno if you’re aware of the whole, rage-monster thing, but he’s not exactly _articulate_ ,” Tony started, but Hulk interrupted.

“Big fight,” he began. “Big mean fight. Hulk hurt. No like. Not fun. Hulk tired, wanna sleep. Get Banner do. Banner not wanna, but Hulk not wanna more. Hulk nap.” He had bruises on the side of his face, deep purples that she’d only seen once before, when he’d fought a Leviathan in the arena, and those had only lasted a few minutes before fading.

“Shit,” Valkyrie said, walking away from the still-stuttering Tony and back towards Thor, Loki, and the Grandmaster. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Hulk agreed, yawning. “Still tired. Banner ok?”

“If you want,” Valkyrie said, and Hulk shrank back into Bruce.

In front of them, the Grandmaster and Loki were in discussion with a wizard in a cape, who was hovering — hugely unnecessarily — about a foot off the ground.

From the angle they were at, Loki looked to be not-quite putting the Grandmaster between herself and the wizard, but had very clearly aligned herself with him.

“I told you I didn’t want you on this planet any more,” the wizard was saying to Thor. The Grandmaster was nodding, apparently very interested in the proceedings, but interested in the same way he was interested in most things -- they were amusing to him. “Our _pact_ ,” he put a little too much emphasis on the word, as if trying to imbue it with power, “was that you and your brother would return to Asgard and leave Earth be.”

“Hmm, yes, well, Asgard was destroyed, for one, we’re refugees now, technically—” the wizard was taken aback, tried to fit in an _I’m sorry_ , but Thor continued to roll on, “—but I’m getting ahead of myself, because I don’t think you quite understand the past couple of days I’ve had. First my father died, then my hammer was destroyed by a sister I didn’t know existed who turned out to be the goddess of death and decided to take the crown, threw me off the rainbow bridge, I was drugged, tortured with a strange device—”

In Valkyrie’s opinion, it was a rough scenario for everyone, and she didn’t need to apologise.

“—forced to fight in a gladiator arena, escaped, flew through the Devil’s Anus, got as many people out of Asgard as we could, then set off the apocalypse because it was the only way to effectively stop said sister from continuing on to deliver Death to all the nine realms. And I lost my eye, and my home, and until a few moments ago, _Loki_ , I thought I’d lost the one sibling I cared about. Also, you people on Earth have done a _shit_ job of making certain the Stones were secure.” He maintained a smile and a jovial tone throughout the speech.

“In my defence,” Loki said, “I’ve wiggled out of the clutches of death so many times you should really be used to it by now.”

“I mean, really,” Thor continued, and the wizard was starting to look like he’d just realised he’d opened a can of worms that had teeth. “I join an alliance attempting to protect their planet, and what are they doing? Making weapons out of leftover cosmic energy chunks and blasting their location to anyone who could listen!”

The Grandmaster offered Loki some popcorn. Loki declined. Valkyrie took a handful.

“And—” Thor twitched his head, pounded at the side of it for a moment, then reached into his eye socket and pulled the new eye out. He continued using the hand holding it for emphasis as he continued; the wizard’s face turned a slightly sickly shade of green. “I _did_ just help save your planet, so...” Thor said. “I think, personally, might want to take a step back here, look at the bigger picture. Also, just as a wizard? You suck.”

Conversation finished, Thor turned to the King, who had approached them. “King T’Challa, am I correct?”

T’Challa inclined his head. He, too, had been watching the rant.

“As you are one of the reigning monarchs on this planet, you would be the best to ask -- my people are refugees. We number in the thousands, but not more than that. Would Earth accept us, or would we be better suited to go elsewhere?”

T’Challa sighed. “I wish to tell you that the vast majority of humans are honourable, and would welcome you, but we cannot even manage to treat our fellow humans fleeing similar situations with dignity.”

Thor gave a _hmm_. He had wanted to stay on Earth, had his heart set on it.

Valkyrie looked up at the sky, and her eyes caught on the crescent hanging there. “Wait, what about your moon?” she said.

“It lacks an atmosphere,” T’Challa said, after a moment. “I don’t know what you are suggesting.”

She jerked a thumb at the Grandmaster. “We’ve got magic. I don’t think that’ll be a pressing issue.”

The Grandmaster waved his hand. “Yeah, fine, I've been volun-told."

Valkyrie looked at him. "It's the best solution. We get our own place to call home without encroaching on anyone, Thor's got access to Earth and all that stuff, Loki will hang out and do whatever it is you two do. You'll do it."

"I will," he conceded, "but I dislike the assumption, you know?"

She kept looking at him. Same look that had netted her almost double payouts in the past. The trick was to not back down.

"Alright, fine, fine." He extended his hands. “I guess it’s free real estate.”

Loki stared at the Grandmaster, possibly in shock at the offer, and pulled him in for a kiss.

“You can move out to the rest of the galaxy at your own pace,” T’Challa agreed, “and it will give the people of Earth time to warm to the idea.”

"Hmm," Thor agreed.

Loki and the Grandmaster hadn't broken apart yet.

Thor looked at her, despair in his eyes. “I suspected, but I never thought it would be confirmed.” He hadn’t been this concerned about the looming possibility of _death_ , but it was his sister’s love life that was causing worry? What were his priorities?

“Those codes were for the _orgy ships_ ,” Valkyrie replied, incredulous. “What did you _think_ was happening there?”

The Grandmaster teleported them back to the Toraji system with little fanfare, and in the time it took Thor to address the people of Asgard and tell them that things were -- well, not quite back to normal, they lost normal when Hela walked in -- no longer in a state of constant flux with the impending death of half the universe, he apparently had terraformed the Earth’s Moon to the point where it was livable.

“So, it’s obviously not got enough gravity to hold an atmosphere regularly,” Loki was saying, as Valkyrie eavesdropped on their conversation. “Did you put some kind of force-field, or--”

“Aw, force-field would have been a good idea. You should have come with me, I’d, we’d have done that, would have been much easier. No, I made it so that there was a loop, anything bigger than a nitrogen but smaller than, uh, dust, that tried to fly over the limit for the atmosphere just ends up starting back at the ground. Should keep the air in, no problems for you guys flying in and out.”

Thor insisted she come for the post-battle meal. It was a tradition, one that had been in effect since Loki had invaded all those years ago.

"Yes, and they left me out on the street with Mjolnir on my chest," Loki complained, without venom.

Tony rang his glass. "A toast! A toast! To ridiculously powerful aliens providing literal gods out of machines to save our collective asses," he said, and held up his glass.

Valkyrie held up hers.

"To Loki's sugar daddy," Bruce added. Tony almost choked on his drink.

"May you never have to deal with such odds again," Loki said.

Valkyrie took a drink. It tasted like victory.

**Author's Note:**

> brunnhilde's lover, from the flashback sequence, is named gudrun after the mythological figure. in the original story, she's in love with sigurd, who is in love with brunnhilde. this is twentygayteen. cut out the middle man.  
> title taken from _Sigfried, _the full passage is:__  
>  _SIEGFRIED: Laughing, you wake in gladness to me! Brünnhilde lives, Brünnhilde laughs! Blessed the days that shines around us! Blessed the sun that lights our way! Blessed the light that dispels the night! Blessed the world where Brünnhilde lives! She wakes, she lives, she greets me with laughter. All my light in Brünnhilde’s star! She’s mine forever, she is my joy, my wealth, my world, my one and all! Light of our loving, laughter in death!_
> 
> I'm rowingviolahere on tumblr! reblog fic [here!](http://rowingviolahere.tumblr.com/post/173409263019/blessed-the-day-that-shines-around-us-blessed-the) or come and scream with me! 


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